February Page 5

  ‘Really?’

  ‘A few people are having their say about you. Yeah, you have your regular dose of crazies in there, but some are definitely on your side. Well, two, at least. Real hotties; Tash and Jasmine.’

  I felt a smile creep up on my face. Cute names, I thought.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Just that they could tell you weren’t a bad guy, and that everyone should be innocent until proven guilty,’ he said.

  I nodded to myself, feeling great that two girls I didn’t even know believed in me.

  ‘And then,’ continued Boges, ‘they said that they thought you were pretty hot and that they’d like to protect you from the real bad guys …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m serious! That’s what they said. It’s amazing what a life of crime can do for a guy!’

  Boges fumbled with the phone for a moment. ‘If you were here you would see that I’ve got my hand up and I’m waiting for a high-five. Come on, don’t leave me hanging!’

  We both cracked up laughing.

  ‘I think it might even be helping my popularity,’ said Boges. ‘Madeleine Baker sat next to me in the art studio this morning.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘First she said that she really liked my metal spider sculpture from last year, at least until I designed that program for it and it got away …’

  ‘Yeah, right out the school gates and under a bus!’

  ‘Then Maddy said that it must have been so hard on me, finding out that my best friend was …’ Boges hesitated.

  ‘Was what?’

  ‘… a psycho.’ I could hear Boges shuffling about uncomfortably. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring that up. I told her that it didn’t bother me a bit—you weren’t a psycho, and that it would just be a matter of time before everyone else understood that.’

  I hated hearing that, but it wasn’t surprising. I knew very well what everyone was thinking about me. My own mother thought I was a monster.

  ‘So she ended up sitting somewhere else?’ I asked.

  ‘No, she didn’t actually. We’re now paired up for a photography project. We’ll be sitting together all term, whether we want to or not!’

  ‘If you were here you’d see that my hand’s up and ready for a high-five, Boges. Come on, don’t leave me hanging!’

  We both laughed again.

  I wanted to see the blog comments for myself. Maybe even add some of my own. I decided I’d check it all out at an internet café as soon as it was safe.

  ‘I think this whole blog thing is great, but it’s also caused a lot of flak,’ said Boges. ‘The Police Commissioner was on the news last night saying that they wouldn’t be shutting your page down. They’re hoping to trace you. To luck onto information that will lead them to you.’

  ‘I’m not going to slip up and give anything away. But can they trace me electronically?’

  ‘It would be very hard to do. I’ve done a lot of fancy footwork to make it near-impossible.’

  ‘You’re a legend Boges. Thanks.’

  I could hear the distant sound of hundreds of kids fooling around in the schoolyard coming down the phone line.

  ‘I think I’ve given up on Winter,’ I said. ‘Her phone’s still switched off.’

  ‘Might be just as well,’ said Boges. ‘She’s part of Sligo’s mob. How do you know they’re not a team? You know, like playing good cop, bad cop.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it. That whole thing in the oil tank could have been a set-up. Sligo pretends to try and kill you, then she pretends to save you when all seems lost, so you tell her all your secrets out of gratitude. But all the time she’s reporting back to the big guy.’

  ‘Boges, I really don’t think so. I was seconds away from death when she stopped the oil pump.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Boges asked. ‘That’s what they want you to believe. You start to trust her and let your guard down and then you open up all about the drawings, your dad’s letter, the empty jewel case … and they add all that to what they already know … It works heaps better than drowning you in sump oil.’

  I thought about it for a moment. Boges could have been right. And I hadn’t even told him about spotting her snooping around the car yard.

  ‘But we don’t know what they might know already,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Boges. ‘And that’s why you have to be extra cautious.’

  There was a sudden sound out the front of the house. I dropped to the floor. ‘Gotta go,’ I whispered. ‘There’s someone outside the house.’

  The sound came again—a ripping, tearing sound. Someone was wrenching the boards off the front door, trying to get inside!

  I swore down the phone. ‘Boges, I’ve gotta go!’

  Not caring how much noise I made, I grabbed the folder with the drawings inside and stuffed everything into my backpack, then pushed it through the hole in the floorboards. The sound of splintering wood filled the air.

  I took a quick glance around, and hoping I hadn’t left any incriminating material lying about, I dived through the hole in the floorboards, twisting back to pull the carpet off-cut back into position over the opening.

  Panting, I crawled under the house, making my way through the dense growth to where Boges had made his escape earlier.

  I drove myself through the jungle of leaves and branches, launched over the back fence, swung myself over into the neighbour’s yard, and hit the ground running.

  There was yelling and shouting behind me but I just kept ducking and weaving, putting street after street between me and the St Johns house.

  I stopped running in the west of the inner city, near the railway. Sweat poured down my body as I squeezed through a fence into a deserted area where old railway sheds and rusting carriages stood, separated by thick grass growing high between them. I practically collapsed on the ground, hidden under an old carriage, hoping that the intruders had not been the cops.

  It didn’t look like the yards had been used in years. I scanned for security cameras. I couldn’t see any—there wasn’t really anything there to protect from thieves—but I kept my head down, anyway.

  When I was sure the coast was clear I crawled out and began investigating the area more closely. Not far from my hiding place there was a deep drain: a cement canal that followed the sloping land. I jumped down into it and followed it until I came to the opening of a huge pipe culvert that must have directed the stormwater underground. It was like the opening of a railway tunnel only a third of the size. It was barred, but the bars had been bent, allowing me to squeeze through them quite easily.

  Further in, the cement floor of the tunnel sloped away into darkness. This might be a good place to lay low for a while, I thought. I dug around in my backpack and pulled out my torch. The light revealed graffiti-covered walls. Some of the tags I recognised from around the city. There were two that dominated all the others:

  It hadn’t rained in ages so I didn’t have to worry about the first warning. But the second one troubled me. It was one I’d seen a lot of in the last couple of weeks and I hoped there was ‘no psycho’ lurking down in the darkness with me. Me and the rats …

  I walked on.

  I could no longer see the light behind me from where I’d entered the tunnel, and was surrounded in darkness. I flashed my torch around to see that the graffiti and the tagging had thinned out. Obviously not many people were keen to venture this far into the drain.

  I came to an intersection where the stormwater drain had widened and split into a Y-shape, now with two drains leading off into more darkness. Just above head height, my torchlight revealed two deep recesses in the walls of the drain, one on each side, possibly for the maintenance workers to store stuff. I flashed the torch around to check out both of them, deciding that the one on the left looked drier. No-one could see me if I was up there and kept hard-up against the wall. I could camp up there. I’d hear people coming—their footstep
s would echo loudly down to me—and I’d be able to get out well before they reached me by disappearing down one of the smaller channels.

  I threw my backpack up first and carefully placed the torch up there to give me light. I got a good grip with my fingers and hauled myself up there. The rockclimbing I’d done with Dad in the past helped.

  I spread myself out on my sleeping-bag, ripped open a packet of biscuits, and started thinking about the people from my blog who, for whatever reason, believed in me.

  And I thought of that strange girl, Winter, and wondered again what game she was playing. I hoped Boges was wrong about her.

  I woke up, sore and cramped.

  I needed to do something. I couldn’t just keep moving from hole to hole. I was almost halfway through month number two. I was warned I needed to survive 365 days—how far in was I? My brain was too messy to work that simple subtraction out.

  Bottom line was that this nightmare wasn’t going to resolve itself. If Winter wasn’t going to help me, the only place I could think of hunting down information was the house I’d escaped from after the first kidnapping.

  I needed to know more about my enemies. I’d have to stop being the hunted and instead hunt them down.

  Hurrying along the dark roads I searched for familiar street names, buildings, houses, anything that I recognised from my long run home after escaping from the first kidnapping. I was determined to find that house again and although I’d only seen a small part of the front entrance, the tiles and the inside of the broom cupboard, I felt confident that if I saw it again, I’d know it.

  But finding the right street—that was another matter altogether.

  A couple of times I thought I’d seen something familiar but wasn’t sure. I was looking for a particular intersection that I remembered seeing not long after escaping from the broom cupboard. It had a small church on one corner, a twenty-four-hour carwash with a couple of pinball machines on another, and on the other side was the large fenced-off area of a school playground.

  I felt like I was getting warmer.

  I was thinking about having to face the long walk back to the drains without having made any progress, when I squinted, straining to see if the little building I was approaching was in fact the church I was looking for.

  On the right was a carwash and a schoolyard, dark, empty and eerily lit by the street lights. I hurried closer.

  I’d found the intersection!

  I stood on the edge of the curb out the front of the church and tried to take myself back to that night—I’d been so filled with fear and adrenaline at the time it was a wonder I remembered anything.

  I recalled the distinct sandstone curbing that I’d stumbled on as they’d dragged me, sack slipping from my head, out of the car, and so I began running down the road alongside the church, searching the driveways to find a match. I quickly passed the houses, giving each one a good look, until finally, through the front gates of a large place, I recognised the paving I’d stumbled on. I jumped back as a car made its way down the street and continued past me.

  Quietly I climbed over the fence, slipped up the driveway and took cover behind some big recycling bins. There was a four-wheel drive parked under a carport. The inside of the house was completely dark. There weren’t any lights on. Hopefully that meant no-one was up.

  I looked around for any other signs that this was the place I was after, but only found some little kids’ bikes leaning up against the carport wall. I crept up and peered into the car. A bruised apple, sunscreen, some baby wipes and a booster seat.

  I had to be in the wrong place …

  322 days to go …

  It was now after midnight. I had trusted my instincts and decided to move on. Back out on the street I restarted my search for the sandstone curbing.

  Sure enough, a hundred metres or so up the road, I found another sandstone driveway and a big, open front gate. I crept up and squatted beside a plumbing van that was parked next door, so I could try and get a better look.

  There were soft voices and signs of movement. I strained to pinpoint where it was coming from.

  A car door closing. It was the dark blue Mercedes from the kidnapping!

  Someone was fumbling with keys.

  A woman’s heels were clicking on the pavers, followed by dull, heavier footsteps.

  Two people—one of them a woman wearing a spotty scarf around her head, and a large man’s figure in shadow—were making their way from the car to the front door.

  From my vantage point I watched as they went inside, lights switching on to indicate where in the house they’d moved to.

  The house was heavily secured with metal bars over the lower windows and a thick security door at the front. I was feeling pretty sure I’d found the right place, but how was I ever going to get inside?

  Beside the house was a very tall pine tree that had recently been lopped; its lower limbs had been cut back from the driveway near the entrance and almost formed a natural ‘ladder’ that was just asking me to climb it.

  The branches scratched my face and hands on the climb up and the mosquitoes were hammering me, too, but I could now see clearly into the house through an open window near the verandah on the second floor.

  And there inside were the red and black tiles that I’d stood on while I was interrogated by that deranged woman!

  The door inside the main room in my view opened and in came two people. The woman had removed her scarf and her crimson-red hair was piled up high in an elaborate hairstyle. Crimson-red! How had I known this without ever seeing her before? I’d barely seen anything but the floor during the abduction and interrogation, and yet for some reason I’d remembered her as a woman with red hair … the exact woman behind the desk that I was staring at through the pine needles!

  She leaned into a drawer, and then pulled out a long, thin brownish cigarette—a cigarillo. Smoke filled the room and began floating up and out of the window towards me. I held my breath.

  She was talking to the man who had accompanied her from the car, who was now standing on the other side of the desk. His suit jacket strained against his bulging body. He looked like a big exercise ball wearing clothes. The red-head’s unforgettable voice was loud and distinct, strong and aggressive. She was gesturing with her hands and stabbing the air with the cigarillo as if she were making important points. He too, seemed to have a lot to say and they were both very interested in some papers on the desk in front of her.

  From the way she dominated the room and conversation, I knew this was the woman who had questioned me the night I was abducted from Memorial Park. I remembered the way Sligo had reacted when I’d described her to him, the way he’d spat and then ground his heel on the wet spot. He knew very well who she was.

  I pulled out my phone, wishing the camera function had better zoom. Luckily the room was fairly well lit, so I didn’t need my flash. I quickly took the best picture I could of the woman. It wasn’t great, but I’d definitely captured her basic shape and features. She was quite a unique character so I was hoping that someone, somewhere, might recognise her.

  Inside, the woman crushed out the cigarillo and opened a tall glass jar on her desk filled with tiny silver balls. She popped a few in her mouth and I recognised them as being the cachous that Gabbi loved using to decorate cupcakes. She then opened a laptop in front of her. The computer screen radiated bluish light onto her face. I wondered again whether she was the woman who’d first called me claiming to have information on my dad … and then set me up. Was she Jennifer Smith?

  From behind the laptop she suddenly called the big guy over with a dramatic flap of her arms. He rushed to her side and leaned in to see whatever it was on the screen that was so intriguing. They stared at each other for a moment, quite intently, and before I knew it the red-head had turned and was peering out the window right at me!

  I instantly dropped heavily to the ground and my movement must have activated an automatic spotlight—the garden was lit up like a football
stadium at night. I ran down the driveway and into the darkness. I didn’t pause to listen to what was going on behind me; all my energy was focused on getting the hell out of there.

  I ran back down the street towards the intersection and then back the way I’d come.

  When I’d run far enough and figured it was safe, I stopped to see if anyone was on my trail.

  Nothing.

  I strained to listen for a car, voices, footsteps …

  Nothing.

  No-one was chasing me. I was running without a pursuer. Had they seen me? I was sure the woman had looked right at me! Did they have security cameras outside? Was I completely paranoid? Had I fled for no reason?

  Whatever the case, I’d found the house, taken a picture of the woman, and made it out of there in one piece.

  321 days to go …

  I’d spent a whole day, yesterday, lurking in the drain. Boges wasn’t going to manage meeting up with me for another day or two, so I’d tried to keep busy walking up and down the tunnels, rifling through my stuff, sleeping, staring at the ceiling … talking to myself.

  I had to get out again.

  Now I was just another anonymous kid wandering the streets near Central Station. Nothing unusual about that. Or so I kept telling myself.

  I tried to act calm and cool, and remain unnoticed, but I felt like a hundred pairs of eyes were on me.

  I stopped by a basketball court where a bunch of kids were having a shootout. I’d always liked playing basketball—or any sport, really—and wished I had it in me to go over and play with them.